Our Urge

Humans cannot help but worship. We always end up worshipping, and we always end up worshipping the wrong things. This almost biological inclination can be highly dangerous when it’s misused, when it’s not connected to the grand purpose of this inclination. When it is not connected to the right source, a vacuum develops within the individual. In this vacuum, we get the worship of rituals, statues, books, systems, people, religion, and politics, among others. From this vacuum springs forth cults of personality, and religious and political zealotry. All misplaced passion, all misplaced emotions, misplaced devotion and misplaced connection. Things and persons that were never intended to be worshipped end up becoming gods or close to it, in the minds and hearts of humanity. This is not meant to discredit learning from others, examples, role modeling and admiration, but there is a clear delineation between such and deification. Oftentimes, the lines between the two are indistinguishable and blurred. We (humans) have the proclivity to not only deify items and people, but we (humans) create entire philosophies, doctrines, ideologies, rituals and varying modes of worship, which revolves around these items and people, deified of course. And if these already exist and are in place, we (humans) exhibit the tendency to just follow along. And we become spiritually poorer as a result. This urge, as powerful as the most basic human urges, cannot be suppressed, repressed, oppressed or eradicated. One might as well eradicate our physiological needs, such as hunger and breathing. But this urging, this longing for profound connection, is not the actual troublesome issue at hand, no matter how many have attempted to portray it as such. Just like one can be reckless and impulsive with our most basic physiological needs, the same applies to our spiritual selves, our spiritual needs. Our (humans) impulsiveness combined with the abundance of distractions lead us to place our spiritual selves and trust in all of the wrong things. Oftentimes we just do not know where or what to place this worship urge into, as so much fights for our undivided attention. So we pick what is most convenient, or what is most available, thus books of wisdom and mythology become holy books, teachers and seers become gods on earth, politics becomes religion and vice versa. This urge will not vanish. This urge needs a destination. The question remains though, what is your destination?